Heritage board’s course on Historic Landscapes day 3

It’s been a long day, and I’m rather tired so this just a quick update of the day.

We started off looking at the area around Sagaån (Saga river) where lots of time and effort has been put in over the years concerning a new route for the highway E18. One alternative was to put the route between two great mounds and the assumed place for the medieval king’s road Eriksgatan and the passage where the king left Västmanland and entered Uppland. The other alternative was to place the route in a landscape which shows a well-worked-industrial agricultural landscape. The issue has been resolved and the new route is being built but it was an interesting discussion on how to different values sometimes clashes.

From there we continued north towards Bergslagen and Norberg – on the way we stopped by the grave field at Anunds mound at Badelunda – an amazing site – well worth a visit. Anunds mound is the largest burial mound in Sweden measuring 60 m diameter and 14 meters in height. On the grave field are also several smaller mounds, ship settings and a line of stones, including a rune stone, a monument called a bridge. The grave field is dated to the Iron Age and the rune stone bridge monument to the late Iron Age or the middle Ages.

After this we stopped at the UNESCO world heritage site Engelsberg Ironworks – a part of Bergslagen (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/556) Engelsberg is one of the best preserved ironworks from the 17th and 18th centuries. The complex is more or less complete, with a manor, with smithies, and blast-furnace among other things.

Though I don’t have a photo – the worlds oldest, still standing, oil refinerie is also in Engelsberg , built during the early 1800s.

From here to Norsberg and a visit to Nya (New) Lapphyttan – Nya Lappnyttan is a reconstructed medieval village, Blast furnace and Iron production open-air museum based on an archaeological excavation of Lapphyttan, during the 80’s, of one the oldest blast furnace remains in Sweden and Europe. It’s been dated to the 12th century.

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Hello and welcome to Testimony of the spade.

My name is Magnus Reuterdahl and I am a Swedish archaeologist and osteologist. Most posts are connected to my work or my interests in general; Scandinavian archaeology, osteology, cultural heritage, literature and so forth.

On the blog Aqua Vitae (in Swedish) and Testimony of a wine (in English) junkie I blog on wine.